1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a powder sample forming apparatus.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There are several kinds of apparatuses for analyzing powder materials such as a spectral analyzer, hue-meter etc., in which a powder material such as wheat flour is analyzed for determining the nature of the material by illuminating the powder material and receiving the reflected or transmitted light for measurement. One of critical factors for the measurement is to make uniform the surface state of the powder to be measured. This operation is called as forming a powder sample.
Conventionally, when a powder sample to be used for the spectral metering is formed, in order to cause the surface state of the powder to become uniform, the powder sample is loaded into a cell, i.e., a shallow dish type container having a glass window on its bottom side and then the upper side of the powder is leveled off by scraping operation. The thus flattened powder surface is pressed against the cell bottom so that the portion of the powder material abutting the glass window, that is, the surface to be examined, may become uniform. Since any of these steps is operated manually, personal differences may occur depending upon the operators, and in some cases, the surface state of the sample may be made different in each measurement, thus the result would involve measurement errors. Further, even though the spectral measurement could be automated, it has been still difficult up to now to convert the whole operations into an automatic system.